"Well, now," said Ed comfortably, "you're all excited. Maybe she ain't as bad as all that."
"She is! She is!" cried Sam. "I've got good reason to know it."
"'Tain't the thing itself that drives you crazy," Ed went on philosophically. "It's thinking about it too much. Your brain goes round like a squirrel in his little cage, and you don't know where you are. Now, if you could put the whole business out of your mind a little while, shut a door on it, so to speak, by and by, when you open it again, there's the right answer standing there plain as a pike-staff!"
"Forget it!" cried Sam. "It's with me night and day! If I let go, I'll cave in. I'll go running back! God help me, if she ever gets hold of me. I'd be the laughing-stock of the whole country! I couldn't look a child in the face! No! No! If you're my friend, keep me from going back! Have you got a Bible?"
"Sure," said Ed. "There in the top of that dunnage bag at your hand. What do you want it for?"
"I'll settle it," Sam muttered, searching for the book. He found it.
"I'll take an oath on it," he said to Ed. "I want you to hear it. Because a man can find a way to get out of an oath he swears to himself. Listen!"
A faint effulgence filtering through the canvas revealed him kneeling on his blankets, with the book in his hands.
He said solemnly: "I swear on this holy book and on my honour that I will never go back to this woman. And if I break this oath may all men despise me! So help me God. Amen!"
"That's a good strong one," remarked Ed cheerfully.